A former senior adviser for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors was arrested Friday on charges that he conspired to steal government trade secrets to benefit China.

John Harold Rogers, 63, shared data with Chinese co-conspirators that “could allow China to manipulate the US market, in a manner similar to insider trading,” according to a statement by the US Attorney’s Office in Washington. China is one of the largest foreign holders of US debt securities.

Starting in 2018, Rogers responded to “information requests” from co-conspirators who worked with China’s intelligence and security apparatus and posed as graduate students, according to an indictment. Rogers has a PhD in economics and advised the Fed’s Division of International Finance from 2010 to 2021, prosecutors said.

“The Chinese Communist Party has expanded its economic espionage campaign to target US government financial policies and trade secrets in an effort to undermine the US and become the sole superpower,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg said in a statement.

Rogers is charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage and making false statements. He faces as many as 15 years in prison on the conspiracy charge.

$450,000

Rogers appeared in federal court in Washington on Friday and is being held in jail until a detention hearing on Tuesday. He was represented by a public defender, who couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Prosecutors said the conspiracy lasted from May 2013 until Thursday. In 2023, Rogers was paid about $450,000 as a part-time professor at a Chinese university, prosecutors said. In August of that year, he tried to get emailed copies of two spreadsheets with proprietary information belonging to the Fed, according to the indictment.

The most sensitive and highly-protected information inside the central bank relates to policy deliberations and interest-rate decisions before their public announcement. Statements released after meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee, which holds eight scheduled gatherings a year, frequently move bond and equity markets worldwide, including the $28 trillion market for US Treasuries.

As of November 2024, China was the second-largest holder of Treasuries at $768.6 billion, according to data from the US Treasury Department. Only Japan held more.

Secret Data

Rogers also sought secret economic data sets and briefing books for designated governors, as well as sensitive information about the FOMC and forthcoming announcements, according to the indictment.

A partial review of records during Rogers’ tenure at the Fed didn’t reveal his attendance at any FOMC meetings.

Rogers stole or tried to steal at least a half dozen trade secrets, including a 2018 briefing book titled “International Economic Topics,” a 2019 document with notes on a briefing of a member of the Federal Reserve board, and a spreadsheet containing propriety Fed information, according to the indictment.

The Fed’s inspector general’s office questioned Rogers in February 2020, and he “lied about his accessing and passage of sensitive information and his associations with his co-conspirators,” the indictment said.

A spokesperson for the Fed declined to comment.

Two of his conspirators worked for China’s intelligence and security apparatus and posed as graduate students at Shandong University of Finance and Economics, prosecutors said.

The case is US v. Rogers, 25-cr-33, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

. Read more on World by NDTV Profit.Rogers is charged with conspiracy to commit economic espionage and making false statements.  Read MoreWorld, Law & Policy, Notifications, Bloomberg 

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